YNAB (You Need A Budget) is a popular program that offers income and expense monitoring tools. Additionally, it even comes with instructional support if you need the assistance. This budgeting service is a subscription based web and mobile app that can sync with your bank accounts. Furthermore, you can test it out for 34 days for free.
Read below for more information on what they have to offer.
YNAB Referral Program
If you’re a YNAB subscriber, you’ll have a personal referral link. Check your “Share YNAB, Get YNAB” page link in the sidebar. Then, when you get your friends to subscribe with your link, both you and your friend will get a free month of YNAB.
Additionally, when friends use your referral link to apply for the free trial, they will appear on your Referral Dashboard, where you’ll be able to track your extra free time. Remember, you’ll only be eligible for free time if your friends subscribe after their free trial.
Check out more details on their referral program here.
How YNAB Works
YNAB’s plan is based off of 4 basic principles. These rules work together to help you get out of debt, save money, and gain financial freedom.
Give Every Dollar a Job
Every dollar in your account should be given a specific purpose. Some of these purposes can be: paying rent, buying clothes, funding retirement, etc. Rather than spending on whatever you want, this rule makes you have more discipline and purpose to your expenses.
Embrace Your True Expenses
Plan for large, less frequent expenses by allocating funds to pay them on a monthly basis. This will include putting away money for insurance premiums, vacations, and birthday purchases. When you continually budget for these, there’s less of a chance for you to find yourself in a big hole.
Roll with the Punches
Planning will only do you so much. There are times when things will come up that will try to kick you off of your plans. YNAB will let you make changes and easily move money from a budgeting category to cover surprise unbudgeted spending. This will help you move forward and out of the red zone for now.
Age Your Money
In the perfect budgeting world, your spending fo the month will be covered by last month’s income. This is not the easiest thing to do, but timing your bills right will keep you far from stressing over money.
YNAB Features
With YNAB, it will give you a variety of tools to assist you in getting your financial goals in line.
Sync Across Devices
Your main budget is on your computer, but YNAB knows that you need access to it when you’re not at home. So you can know how much you have to spend and add expenses when they happen on their mobile app.
It will sync continuously with the web app and other mobile devices. You’ll be given access to your budget in real time and so will other shared users on your account.
Direct Import
Import transactions from your bank account into YNAB. It’s not a requirement, but making an automatic import of your bank transactions will save you from having to log into it separately or manually to update them.
Goals
Look beyond your monthly budget and make goals to plan for future expenses. You’ll be able to pick between a target balance or a monthly funding goal.
After you’ve come up with a goal, YNAB will track your progress and suggest tips for reaching your objectives.
Reports
Wile you work for sticking to your budget, it will help if you look into your past spending habits. This is where you’ll be able to see what you can work on and how you can make progress.
YNAB has tree reports that you can use to help keep yourself in line:
- The spending report. It will break down your spending by category groups and individual categories for an allotted time frame.
- The net worth report. Tracks your overall assets and liabilities, showing how your overall worth has changed over time.
- The income vs. expenses report. Will give you a monthly breakdown on all of your income sources and your expenses by category. You’ll be able to track overall income and overall expenses for specific months and over several months.
WorkShops
YNAB offers a solid budgeting software. Plus, it even comes with free, live workshops that go over topics like:
- How to master credit cards with your budget
- How to aggressively pay down debt
- How to reach your savings goals
- How to break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle
- How to pay for big expenses without borrowing
- How to budget when you’re broke
This company also offers step-by-step guides, weekly videos, newsletters, and a podcast to help you better manage your money. These sources are available for everyone to use and you don’t even have to be a member to access it.
YNAB Pricing
You’ll be able to try YNAB free for 34 days. After the trial period is over, the service is $11.99 a month or $84 a year. The company states that “on average, new budgeters save $600 by month two and more than $6,000 in the first year.” If this is accurate, then paying the annual fee is more than justified.
YNAB does come with no-risk, 100% money-back guarantee. So, if there’s any time you feel like you don’t have control over your money, the company will give you a fill refund. No questions asked.
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Conclusion
It doesn’t matter if you’re new to budgeting or not, YNAB is effective and easy to use. This is also one of the most popular and respected personal finance apps in the market. Additionally, their services offers you a birds eye view of your budgeting progress and finances.
The free 34-day trial is hard to pass up. It will offer you enough time to get a feel of what they have to provide you and how well you like their services.
